Conservative media run emotional gamut after Trump win

As of Wednesday, Trump has knocked out all of his GOP competitors and is now, as the Republican National Committee has called him, the presumptive nominee. So, how will the anti-Trump media on the Right reconcile (or not) their feelings with the de facto leader of the GOP?

Here’s how some of the anti-Trump media on the Right reacted:

Frustration

When it looked like Trump was on track Tuesday for an important primary victory in Indiana, Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, published a blog post lashing out at the GOP “establishment” for never having put up a fight.

“[I]t’s not as though the establishment ever really fought Trump,” he wrote. “First, it told itself that Trump would fade on his own (not a crazy thing to believe last summer or fall, but clearly wrong by December or January); then some element of it hoped that Trump would win Iowa, thus ending Cruz’s candidacy and making the way for a preferred non-Trump candidate… The establishment may have hoped Trump wouldn’t get the nomination, but it never fought to keep it from happening.”

Sorrow

On his website late Tuesday night, after it was clear Trump had won Indiana, radio host Glenn Beck, who had endorsed and campaigned for Ted Cruz, published an ominous lament.

“Regardless of who ends up being president, we are responsible for holding them accountable to the people — to the Constitution,” he wrote. “We still owe each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Civilizations and societies go through waves of belief in individual liberty versus belief in government. So, for now, we’re in the minority. Weather the storm.”

Thoughtful

Ross Douthat, a Trump critic and conservative columnist for the New York Times, wrote Wednesday in a resigned tone that perhaps the GOP, by accepting Trump as its nominee, was signalling a shift in its ideological makeup. Maybe, he said, it is no longer a party that embraces pure conservatism.

“Trump proved that movement conservative ideas and litmus tests don’t really have any purchase on millions of Republican voters,” he wrote. “Again and again, Cruz and the other GOP candidates stressed that Trump wasn’t really a conservative; they listed his heresies, catalogued his deviations, dug up his barely buried liberal past. No doubt this case resonated with many Republicans. But not with nearly enough of them to make Cruz the nominee. What remains, then, is Trumpism. Which is also, in its lurching, sometimes insightful, often wicked way, a theory of what kind of party the Republicans should become, and one that a plurality of Republicans have now actually voted to embrace.”

Denial

Radio host and blogger Erick Erickson reacted Wednesday to Trump’s nomination-in-waiting with a mix of anger and rejection.

“Why can’t the GOP say this is unacceptable,” he wrote at his website. “It is, after all, apparent that much of Trump’s support comes from outside the GOP with people who came into the party to support Trump, but otherwise have no use for the party. It is apparent that Trump is using the party as a personal vehicle without a commitment to the party otherwise… [Democratic candidate] Hillary Clinton is unfit for the presidency, but so is Donald Trump.”

He wrote in a separate post that “this is going to end badly for the GOP. Everyone knows it — Republican leaders included — everyone knows it except Donald Trump’s supporters.”

Hopeful

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board has long cast doubt on Trump as a serious candidate and disparaged his policies as ineffective. After the Indiana primary, however, the paper signaled an openness to seeing him grow and heal the current rifts within the GOP.

“Mr. Trump could start by doing some homework on issues he would have to deal with as president,” said the Journal. “He cannot expect undecided voters to simply trust that he’ll do that if he becomes president. Republican voters in their wisdom have rallied to Donald Trump to break up the Washington status quo. His job is not to let them down.”